Last Thursday night in conjunction with The Irish Catholic we hosted Dr Eric Kaufmann who addressed an audience of about 120 people on the topic of his latest book, ‘Will the Religious Inherit the Earth?’

Kaufmann (himself on the secular (but moderate) side of the religious/secular divide) believes that predictions of the eventual secularisation of the entire planet are not just short of the mark, but could well be the opposite of the truth, even in the world’s secular heartland, Europe.

(Dr Kaufmann’s slides from his talk, illustrating some of the points he makes can be downloaded from here. A version of the talk will be carried in the September issue of Studies)

He points out that even in the most secularised parts of Europe, countries like France, rates of Church attendance while very low, remain stubbornly at 5-10 percent and show no sign of falling any lower. Of course, the rate of Church attendance is not the only marker of religiosity. The percentage of the population that is religious is undoubtedly higher than the number going to church regularly.

However, taking 5-10 percent as the baseline in these very secularised countries, Kaufmann posits that this percentage will grow in the decades to come driven by three different factors.

One is immigration from highly religious parts of the world.

A second is higher birth rates among religious believers compared with seculars.

The third is the greater success of religious believers, especially ‘fundamentalists’ in holding on to their children instead of losing them to ‘the world’.

He points out that in Britain and France the most religious parts of those countries are the capital cities, London and Paris, rather than the rural areas as was once the case. Immigration is transforming the religious landscape of our biggest cities.

Many of the immigrants are Muslim and Kaufmann notes that levels of religious observance by young Muslims is just as high, if not higher, than among older Muslims.

He concedes that Muslim birth rates fall sharply after immigration but nonetheless a combination of immigration plus a somewhat higher birth rate than the native population, plus a higher retention rate will increase the Muslim share of European populations and therefore the religious share of those populations.

What of the native religious population? Kaufmann had some very interesting figures from Spain. Spain has a very low birth rate, around 1.37 which is far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple.

However, practising Catholics in Spain have a birth rate of 1.77 children per couple. This is still below replacement level, but secular Spaniards manage only one child per couple.

To put it another way, in Spain a hundred practising Catholic couples (or 200 adults) will have 177 children between them, while a hundred secular couples (again 200 adults) will only manage one hundred.

Over time, that will make a big difference, especially if the religious couples manage to retain a lot of their children and not lose them to secularism.

For me, this very low birth rate among seculars is particularly striking. They are clearly very heavily invested in ‘self-fulfilment’ and therefore in personal freedom and this doesn’t leave much room for children. Hence secular support for laws and social attitudes that support untrammelled personal freedom, e.g. complete tolerance for divorce, abortion, cohabitation etc.

In contrast, religious believers tend to emphasise commitment over freedom, and are therefore more committed than seculars to children and families. This means they will tend not to like divorce, abortion cohabitation etc.

One set of values favours the individual while the other set of values favours society and especially the small society called the family.

It is turning out that secular values are self-cannibalising and therefore point to a decline in secularism’s share of the world population. Religious values are more pro-social and therefore have a brighter future.

To paraphrase Karl Marx, secularism contains the seeds of its own destruction.